Archive

Reporters, hired to work with phony references in nursing homes for the poor, uncover filthy conditions, unqualified employees (as evidenced by their own hiring), and undignified care of the elderly, often in the name of profit.

Pierre Salinger goes undercover in two California jails (with pre-arranged faux arrests) to investigate conditions throughout the state penal system, as part of a major series for the San Francisco Chronicle. Salinger also did a follow-up series.

The series examines welfare inefficiencies - and the ease with which some who are not needy can take advantage of the aid - based on six months of reporting, including Ed May's three-month undercover stint as a welfare case worker in Erie County, New York.

In this 16-part series, New York World-Telegram and Sun reporter George Allen reports on the two months he spent working as an English teacher at Brooklyn's John Marshall Junior High School in an effort to "report on a crime-ridden school from the inside." He was credentialed a few months earlier as part of the assignment and took three education courses to prepare at Columbia Teachers' College, where he earned a substitute teacher's license with a falsified employment history.